The Minions Are Taking Over!

Most of us have come across Despicable Me, in particular, those little yellow minions. The minions are very popular with my friends and recently I have been commissioned cards featuring them. Because they are some crazy characters, it opens up a whole load of ideas and essentially anything works, the madder, the better.

The first card was actually from last October and was a personalised birthday card. I wanted to imply the chaos wreaked by them so rather than having one minion on the front, I chose to show minions all over the place. These were paper pieced and the card was finished with a hand written sentiment and lots of stars.

My second card, more recently commissioned, was again for a birthday. The specification ("a purple minion doing something stupid please") was a little more specific but still gave me a lot of free reign over the design. As the birthday girl was a mutual friend, I was able to design something suitable. I don't think this minion actually looks that out of place slumped in this cocktail glass . . . .

The third card, for the friend who commissioned the previous one, was for graduation rather than a birthday. In a similar way to the previous cards (and almost all of my cards), this one was paper pieced and featured a purple minion wearing a mortar board. My friend, Min, has been regularly referred to as a minion, so this fit well.

Manchester United

A couple of entries ago, I mentioned Manchester United cards. I was asked by one of the girls in my hall to make cards of more or less the whole football squad and was my biggest commission to date. She gave me a list of the players she wanted and pointed me in the direction of the Manchester United website. For those who can't guess, she is a massive United fan. 

I tried to make them as simple as possible - 25 cards was more than enough without making them extra complicated! I used red card for the shirts and added detail using my trusty white pencil and black pen. The football was an extra touch - just black pen on white card.
Things did however get complicated when I realised that there were two number 20's. I'm by no means a football expert or even a fan but even I know that there is only one of each number on a team. It turns out that Fabio doesn't play for United at the moment and was playing in his number for Queen's Park Rangers while van Persie is using his number for the reds. Who knew? This of course meant I had to make a third style of shirt to cater for that little problem. After that, it was all straight forward and just a case of getting them all stuck down, photographed and wrapped. 


* I guess at this point that I should write a disclaimer: the cards made by me do not necessarily represent my views! Don't want to be loosing potential customers because they support Man City or Liverpool!!

Valentine's Day

My life has fallen into chaos with all the work I have to do so once again, another over due post (this one should have gone out on Thursday, if you couldn't guess).

Valentine's Day - or Single Awareness Day, depending on your relationship status - is probably one of the biggest days of the year for card shops, florists and, these days, anyone in the commercial industry. I think it's safe to say that I have now experienced Valentine's Day on three levels: single, taken and for the first time this year, on the other side of the shop counter (so to speak).
As you know from my last post, I had a craft fair a couple of weeks ago so naturally, I had to make a handful of V-Day cards for that. Word is spreading through my halls about my cards so as well as selling (very few) cards at the fair, I also sold some from the comfort of my own room. 

I'm not going to lie though, making lots of what I see as rather personal cards, was quite odd. The few times that I had sent a Valentine's card, it was more that just another card so making some that were for other people to send to their Valentines seemed quite strange. I didn't have any commissions, just the ones that I had made while watching TV in the evenings.

I guess I should probably share some now shouldn't I? Bring on the Hall of Cards . . . 

 I have now reached that point when if I am stuck for inspiration, I make an owl card to fit with that theme. I already have my design for Mother's Day!

 I really liked these two cards. I only had a couple of the heart embellishments otherwise I would have made more. I found the red, white and black colour scheme worked quite well for Valentine's cards. 

I was surprised that the calligraphy cards I made didn't sell. I only made two - the other one said Be Mine - but I thought, for something a bit different . . . ah well.
I plan on making lots more using calligraphy soon, especially for this weekend's fairs*.

Another owl one, yes, I know but I had to have two owls on a Valentine's Day card. I told a lie before; I did get a commission, from mum. She wanted an owl card but the two I had previously made had already gone so I had to make another one.











*That wasn't a typo, that 'fairs' was definitely a plural. Well when I say fairs, one of them is the new Manchester Maker's Market happening on Saturday. The event on Sunday isn't strictly a fair but is quite an important one for me: the St Gabriel's Annual Fundraiser. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning might remember that is was because of last year's fundraiser that I am where I am today, although don't go getting the birthday cards out yet though, the fundraiser is earlier this year!

Digital Cards

My Final Design

It's a little bit late into the New Year to be posting Christmas cards but I wanted to share a special project that my mum commissioned. She wanted to send very simple Christmas cards out to friends and family this year and asked me to design one. As it was to be mass produced, my only option was to use my computer to design a digital card. Having never really done anything like this on a semi-professional level before was exciting and a little be challenging, so with my trusty sketchbook in hand, I made a start designing it.
Mum had wanted a simple dove on the front of the card so first things first, I had to try and draw one that didn't look too odd - birds have never been my strong point! I was able to scan it in and get it onto Photoshop  to edit it and make it look pretty. The great thing I found about making digital cards, is that you don't have to worry about finding the right design first time. There is a wonderful thing called the undo button! I was also able to come up with a few designs and email them onto mum so that she could pick the one she liked the most. She was then able to get them printed. The money she saved from buying cards was then donated to the flood relief fund as my area was hit pretty bad by the flooding in November.

Don't worry though! I am still sticking to my handmade cards but that option is available for mass produced cards - my mum sends a LOT of Christmas cards!

Made by Emma . . . . .Woodhouse?

Just a quick entry before I go down and help decorate the St Gabriel's Hall Christmas tree.

Saturday sees my third craft fair (they're like buses, you know) so over the weekend, I was busy replenishing my stock of Christmas cards - because if they were ever going to sell at a craft fair it would be this one! I now have over 70 although I haven't even started making personal ones yet (note to self: GET A MOVE ON!)
I also picked up a few more frames to paper-piece. I have been commissioned to make one as a Christmas present for a friend so I shall be posting that one after C-Day but I still had two to do for Saturday. This had me stumped and for the best part of yesterday evening, I sat in front of my laptop thinking up a new idea - I felt it was too soon to be repeating designs.

I can't remember what exactly sparked this idea but it is one I had already considered. Kind of. I  have a list of ideas for my paper pieced pictures, one of which was dresses. But that is such a wide theme. And then it hit me:


Regency ------ Miss Jane Austen

I love the three books I have read (three because I haven't got round to read the others yet) and decided to base my next creations on the work of Jane Austen. I felt it was pretty obvious which one I should do first: Pride and Prejudice. I sketched out a regency outfit - finding an amazing dress-up game on Deviant Art in the process - and found some 17th century style paper to make the dress out of. I added some detail using coloured pencils before sticking it down to the background. To finish it, I hand wrote those famous opening lines from the novel and attached that with sticky pads. I thought about added a bonnet to the outfit but maybe next time. I have to come up with my quote first. I feel it should be from Emma, but I have left my little book of Jane Austen quotes at home so I will have to really on the internet.

I also want to share another of my latest creations. One of my course mates is a massive Suits fan (for those who don't know what that's about, its a legal drama based in New York) and she recently celebrated her birthday. So naturally, it had to be a Suits card. 
As I do with all my cards, especially ones with a pop culture theme, I shared it too my Tumblr blog and had a rather large response. My friend had also shown it to her Suits fan friends who said 'That was YOUR card????' The word is spreading! Today: Manchester, tomorrow: the World!

I did receive possible the best thanks I have ever had from a card from Jen though:

WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW AWESOME MY BIRTHDAY CARD IS. SERIOUSLY.

That made me laugh.
She actually asked me today for some Suits themed Christmas cards to send to friends. Suddenly, World domination doesn't seem that far away any more!